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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28134060">an extraordinarily sweet sadness</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/julianbashir/pseuds/julianbashir'>julianbashir</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Horticulture, Jamie &amp; Dani have some belligerent sexual tension happening but it stays pre-slash, Plants, Pre-Slash, vague allusions to my obscure rose knowledge</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 14:48:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,242</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28134060</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/julianbashir/pseuds/julianbashir</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing about marrying your childhood sweetheart is you think you’ll have plenty of time. You don't expend much energy considering what happens after.</p><p>Even when she was breaking his heart, she still thought he'd be there. Out in the world, even if he never wanted to see her again.</p><p>But he's not. And Dani is alone.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dani Clayton &amp; Edmund O'Mara, Dani Clayton &amp; Jamie, Dani Clayton/Jamie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Yuletide 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>an extraordinarily sweet sadness</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Steve/gifts">Steve</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.</p><p>
  <i>No evening I had passed at Bly had the portentous quality of this one; in spite of which--and in spite also of the deeper depths of consternation that had opened beneath my feet--there was literally, in the ebbing actual, an extraordinarily sweet sadness.</i>
</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Edmund O’Mara goes back into the earth on a perfectly splendid afternoon, sunny with just the hint of a breeze, four days before their planned wedding. His parents’ flight from Atlanta was delayed twice. They only just make it in time for the service, already dressed in funereal black when she picks them up at the airport. </p><p>They’re inside, in the house he bought for them to live in together. It’s full of people and she’s sure there are things she should be doing, but instead she’s sitting in the greenhouse.</p><p>The thing about marrying your childhood sweetheart is you think you’ll have plenty of time. You don't expend much energy considering what happens after.</p><p>Even when she was breaking his heart, she still thought he'd be there. Out in the world, even if he never wanted to see her again.</p><p>But he's not. And Dani is alone.</p><p>—</p><p>Owen drags her out and into his ancient rattletrap two weeks after, saying it’s been too long since anyone has fed and watered her. He buys them lunch from a taco truck that smells like heaven. </p><p>They carry their bounty to Washington Park, five minutes from the street where Owen and Eddie grew up next door to each other. Two peculiar peas in a pod. Sitting on a bench under Eddie’s favorite oak tree, they guzzle Hibiscus Jarritos and eat steak tacos with Hatch chiles that make Dani’s eyes stream. It helps mask the crying they do later, anyway, which was likely Owen's plan. The sticky sopapillas lend a hint of sweetness to the end of their conversation and destroy the remains of their paper napkins.</p><p>This is the most time she’s ever spent with Eddie’s best friend, just the two of them. It feels right to be with Owen. To be with someone who misses Eddie as much as she does.</p><p>She thinks it’s probably supposed to hurt this much.</p><p>—</p><p>Jamie Taylor shows up on her front porch four months and seventeen days after. Dani’s wearing one of Eddie’s old college sweatshirts and the same pair of leggings she’s had on for three days. She thinks there’s probably marinara sauce in her hair.</p><p>Jamie is wearing coveralls and has a clipboard in her hand and a pencil tucked behind one ear. There’s a streak of something brown smudged across her forehead that Dani hopes like hell is dirt.</p><p>“What do you want, Jamie?”</p><p>“I have some of Eddie’s samples.”</p><p>“You what?”</p><p>“He was helping me with a research project and I never got the chance to return some of his samples. I wanted to see if you were trying to maintain his greenhouse.”</p><p>Dani is suddenly so incandescent with rage that for a moment she can't breathe.</p><p>“Fuck you, Jamie.”</p><p>Jamie stands on the lawn for half an hour after Dani slams the front door in her face. She doesn’t return for ten months.</p><p>—</p><p>Dani acquires a cat six months and five days after.</p><p>It's not like she goes out of her way to find one, or anything. It shows up on the back porch one typically rainy day, filthy and skinny and generally pathetic looking.</p><p>Dani foolishly leaves out some tuna and one thing leads to another and now she has a cat living with her. Or more properly, she now lives with a cat. She's never been under any illusions about how human-feline relationships function.</p><p>The first time it sleeps inside the house she lies awake staring at the ceiling until the sun comes up, listening to the gentle purring from the windowsill.</p><p>Eddie was allergic to cats.</p><p>—</p><p>Eight months and thirteen days after Dani finally talks to the therapist Owen recommended that day at the park, pressing the stiff paper card into her shaking hand. When she leaves the office an hour later, she feels hollowed out and angry, but she understands a little more why she feels that way.</p><p>The question isn’t: how can she live without Eddie?</p><p>The question is: how can she live with herself knowing she can live without Eddie?</p><p>—</p><p>Hannah Grose is the one who asks about the roses, one year and thirteen days after.</p><p>“I know he was working on getting approval as an AGRS site.”</p><p>“As a? Oh. The American Garden — ”</p><p>“Rose Selections, yes.”</p><p>“And you needed my help with?”</p><p>“Finishing what Eddie started.”</p><p>—</p><p>Jamie Taylor joins the rose project one year and twenty-nine days after.</p><p>“What’s she doing here?” Dani keeps the expletives out of her question only by reminding herself she’s standing between two horticulture students she'd at first mistaken for high school volunteers.</p><p>“Dr. Taylor is the only botanist in the tri-state area with expertise in growing desert varietals in heavy rainfall environments.”</p><p>Flora Wingrave has a sunny smile on her freckled, cheerful face, and Dani quite valiantly manages not to curse out the poor, unsuspecting grad student and her obvious hero worship.</p><p>“Ah. Of course she is.”</p><p>She glares at Jamie, who is as impervious to her irritation as always, and starts stomping toward the back of the house. Dani hears her ambling after her through the lovingly tended Kentucky Bluegrass. She shows Jamie the plot laid out for the desert roses and leaves her to it.</p><p>At the end of the day, sweaty and pleasantly exhausted from hours of weeding, she spots something sitting on the front porch railing. It’s a bud vase. Inside is a single, perfect Skyrocket rose, preserved in some sort of high gloss polymer. It will never wilt, never fade, never die.</p><p>Skyrockets were Eddie’s favorites.</p><p>—</p><p>She lets Jamie into the greenhouse one year and six months after.</p><p>“Oh, Dani.” Her eyes widen as she shoves her sunglasses up into her unruly hair, taking in the riotous growth of hundreds of plants that have no business living, let alone thriving, in harmony. “You, too, huh?”</p><p>Dani lowers herself to the ground, legs folding beneath her, and presses one palm flat to the earth. There’s the familiar tingle up her arm and a tug beneath her breastbone and then: life. It spills forth into the precisely filtered light of the greenhouse.</p><p>An everyday miracle.</p><p>“Yeah.” Her smile feels watery. “Yeah, me too.”</p><p>“That’s why you were so bloody furious. That first day when I asked about the greenhouse.” Jamie sits next to her, traces a tender, sun-browned finger across the freshly opened petals of a Golden Ophelia. She’s mindful, as ever, of the thorns. “I thought. Maybe.”</p><p>“I was mostly sad, then, but it was easier to be angry.”</p><p>Jamie gestures to the rose. “Can I?” </p><p>Dani nods and she snaps it with just a few inches of stem, inspects it for thorns, and tucks it behind Dani's ear, familiar callouses brushing the shell softly as the rose petals she arranges there.</p><p>“Which one?” Jamie asks, gentle hand slipping softly from her neck to rest on her shoulder, a comforting weight of flesh and bone and ligaments and tendons and all the myriad other magical, minuscule bits and pieces that make up a living, breathing, human body. Her blue eyes rove the greenhouse, expression warm and expectant.</p><p>Dani smiles and something that feels peculiarly like joy unfurls in her chest.</p><p>“The Skyrockets.”</p><p>Jamie stands and walks over to the riotous cluster of cherry-red roses, bends down until her face is almost brushing the topmost petals.</p><p>There’s a rustle, like wind through leaves and also like laughter, and Jamie's mouth curls into a grin.</p><p>“Hello, Eddie.”</p>
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